Soft
by keem
Summary: In which Joel and Ellie discuss boys, and ignore the elephant in the room. Mild JoelxEllie, spoilers. R&R.


**Soft**

"What do you think about him, Joel?"

Ellie's voice is light, nonchalant, even – but Joel knows better. This is a game she has been playing with him for the past several weeks now, and this question, although seemingly innocuous enough, is calculated for effect.

Joel finishes counting the rations – six bottles of alcohol, fourteen gears – and tucks them away in the various compartments of his backpack. While Ellie can try to disguise her voice, there's no disguising that look – if only she knew how much those eyes gaze her away, that adamant stare.

"I think he's nice. Why? You lookin' for my permission to ask him on a date?" The band on his backpack is frayed and aged with use – Joel frowns as he tests the strength of it, gently slipping it over his left shoulder.

"Shoulda traded him for a needle of thread and instead…"

"I think he likes me."

"Lots of boys like you, it seems," Joel says. "And I reckon you even like some of them back, with how often this question has been coming up recently." At last he lifts his head, trying to catch her eye, but she quickly looks away.

"Well?"

"Well, what?" she asks, and beneath the layer of old dirt and sweat he can see that the usually pale skin is tinged pink. "I was just curious."

"I don't understand. Are you looking for my permission, then? You never have, before." Joel turns away from her, heading back up the winding, graveled path back to the entrance of the outpost. Their cabin is a short distance from here – close enough that it's within shouting distance of Tommy in case any hunters decide to drop in, but far enough that Joel can have the measure of privacy he's come to demand.

"You've never been shy to tell me about how you don't have to listen to me, how I'm not your father. Especially lately," he adds, not without feeling a twinge of bitterness. Ellie has always been opinionated, borderline mutinous – but now, at seventeen, she can be downright intolerable at times.

"I just don't want to be – coddled, that's all," Ellie's voice drifts up from behind him, "I'm not a baby."

"Then do what you want, then. See who you want."

"And that doesn't bother you? At all?"

Joel sighs. He's never been good with words, with conversation – at least not on these levels. Ellie, on the other hand, loves to talk things out, to collapse boundaries. It's as though she delights in making grown men uncomfortable.

"Depends on the boy. Michael? He's harmless enough. Just don't depend on him in a fight." This is how he has come to measure worth, in the wake of the infection – strength, both physical and in terms of will. Michael is scrawny, with none of the bright-eyed shrewdness that has carried Ellie so far. It is astounding to think that some people have kept an element of innocence in the wake of _Cordyceps _– but with Michael, it's undeniable. Joel does not view it as a good thing.

_Kids're getting too dependent on what this outpost has to offer. It's saving people, sure, but it's making them complacent, too. _This was a huge factor in causing Joel to shy away from the outpost, rather than to embrace it the way his brother has. Sure, it has brought people together for a common goal, and together they have accomplished great things: erected a fortified shelter, brought water and power to their population with the help of their generator, helped establish a community that is relatively thriving, considering this trying times. This has brought some sense of stability, even peace – but for how long?

Joel has seen all these things fail more times than he can count. Generators short out, walls can be breached, people can turn on one another…

"He's too soft for you," Joel says quietly, changing his mind.

As Joel reaches for the gate, Ellie reaches for him and seizes him by the wrist. Joel looks down just as their hands meet. Joel's are nearly black with dirt, an ironworker's hands that have seen no relief since the Fall.

And though Ellie is generations younger than he, hers aren't much better. Twenty-three years ago, Joel would have stilled at the sight of his baby girl's hands like that. No girl should ever have to work that hard, to get mud under her cuticles and have skin cracked from misuse. He had always tried to provide for Sara so that she wouldn't _have _to get dirty. The sight of Ellie's stills him, hits him with a pang of wistfulness so potent that his other hand clenches the chainlink of the fence so fiercely that it will leave a mark later.

Not for the first time, he wonders what kind of life he's created for Ellie now.

"You're right," Ellie says, her voice cutting through the fog of his own shame and self-disgust. "You're right.

They're all too soft for me."


End file.
